Planning and implementing the activity require that you focus on five important issues at the same time:

1. The developmental capabilities of individual children and the group as a whole,
2. Interest of individual children and the group,
3. What you want children to learn (phonemic awareness),
4. What developmental skills you want to promote (e.g., Social/emotional, physical (gross or fine-motor), cognitive, language, etc.), and
5. The curriculum area (e.g., Art, blocks, large group, etc.) for this activity

To begin, discuss your overall plan with your head teacher to get an initial OK that your idea is appropriate and feasible.  Give the completed activity plan form to your head teacher, and she will make comments and initial the plan to indicate that the two of you have discussed your activity and that it is appropriate for her classroom.

One of the goals of the course is to help you develop strategies for meeting individual children’s goals within the context of classroom activities. For each activity, you will be using a specific form of assessment to determine the success of your activity. You should encourage two children for whom you have planned individual objectives to participate in the activity. This is not always effective. You can track your objectives in other areas of the room. Keep track of your child’s behaviors that are related to the objective and include these in your activity plan self-evaluation. On the scheduled due date of your self-evaluation, hand in (1) your original plan with comments from head teacher on it, (2) revised plan, (3) its evaluation form from course instructor, and (4) your self-evaluation.

Self-Evaluation

The self-evaluation gives you an opportunity to reflect upon your activity.  Address the following points in your evaluation of each activity plan that you implemented:

1. What actually happened during the activity implementation – How many children participated? What did they do (briefly)? What specific teaching strategies did you use?  Did anything unexpected occur?  What parts of the activity worked or didn’t work? 
2. If you re-did this plan on this day, with this group of children, what would you do differently?  Why?  What would you keep the same?  Why?  Would you use this activity with a group in the future?  If so, would you change anything and why? 
3. How did this activity meet the developmental and content objectives (group and individual) that you wrote in your plan?  What did the children learn by participating in this activity and how did you facilitate this learning (describe the behaviors that you observed)?
4. Was the assessment tool that you used an effective measure?  Why or why not?